Thank You

Error.

Not so impressed, apparently, by rising house prices, lower gasoline prices, and the recent bull market in stocks, the consensus of 50 forecasters, polled monthly by Blue Chip Economic Indicators, still has quite modest growth expectations for real gross domestic product through this year and next.

According to the Blue Chip report released Friday, the consensus projects growth (on a fourth-quarter-over-fourth-quarter basis) at 2.3% this year and at 2.8% in 2014. If those forecasts prove true, it would mean that, in the 5½ years since the recession ended in 2009's second quarter, there will have been no four-quarter period in which growth ran as high as 3%, a relatively low bar in previous expansions.

Two components of GDP that generally show strength in expansions, but aren't expected to this time, are consumer spending and investment in plant and equipment. Real consumer spending rose at an annual rate of 3.2% in the first quarter, but the consensus expects it to slow to 2.0%-2.5% this year and 2.5%-2.7% next year. Plant and equipment investment is expected to grow at just 4.9% this year and 6.0% in 2014, down from 8.0% in 2012 and 8.6% in 2011.

The unemployment rate, currently 7.5%, is expected to tick down to 7.4% by the fourth quarter of this year, and to 6.9% by fourth quarter 2014 -- still noticeably higher than the 6.5% target set by Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke.

The 10 most optimistic forecasters of the 50 do foresee 3% growth, projecting 2.9% (again, on a Q4/Q4 basis) this year and 3.5% in 2014. The optimistic consensus also foresees the jobless rate falling to 6.6% by fourth-quarter 2014, just about at Bernanke's target.

Asked why job growth has been running so unusually slow during this recovery, respondents blamed, among other factors, the "high degree of policy uncertainty."

IN FEBRUARY 1992, I applied to Barron's Editor Alan Abelson, who died last week at age 87, for a job as commodities columnist. I had knowledge of commodities, but no experience in journalism. Would Abelson take a chance on a rookie who had never met a weekly deadline?

Luckily for me, I was the only candidate. Alan was apparently too busy to consider more than one applicant, for in addition to carrying the burdens of being editor, he also wrote the marquee column. When I met with him and offered him clips from my rather meager free-lance magazine work, he handed the clips back to me. After all, how would he know what I had written and what some editor had rewritten? Instead, I was to write him a sample commodities column.

I got the job, even though the column I submitted was no great shakes. But I like to think his unorthodox approach to hiring worked, due to his sixth sense at spotting talent. Certainly, most of the people he hired over the years proved to be unusually talented -- in my view, at least, and also in the view of the current editor, Ed Finn, who has retained and promoted many of Alan's original hires.

In addition to the commodities column, I wrote a few feature articles about my real area of interest, the economy. Alan then told me he would create a weekly column for me about the economy called "Behind the Numbers."

At that proposal I balked. It seemed to me you could do a weekly column about the markets. But the economy? Not enough happened from week to week.

THEN, WHEN I LEARNED THAT Alan would be stepping down to devote his time to writing his column, I had second thoughts. Despite my misgivings, I asked him if he still wanted to launch an economics column. To my surprise -- lame-duck editors aren't supposed to be so bold -- he said yes, we'd go ahead with it.

Two days before my first column was to appear, Alan told me it would not be called "Behind the Numbers," but "Economic Beat." Economics is my beat. The beat goes on. I liked that; still do.

For the next several weeks, Alan worked hard to help me shape my column, each week discussing my various ideas with me, and going over my copy. He would edit my prose carefully, often contributing words and phrases that lent my sentences greater clarity and force. Gradually, he withdrew the close monitoring and let me function on my own. I soon learned there was more than enough to say about the economy in a weekly column.

Alan also had three bits of advice for a fledgling columnist: Write in your own voice; don't be afraid to be wrong; keep your readers surprised. Honored by me in the breach, perhaps, but good advice, when you think about it.

Over the years, as a columnist, I developed a very different perspective from Alan's. And while I feel that he must at times have read me with the same feeling Dr. Frankenstein harbored toward his monster, all great editors should have a few Frankenstein monsters.